“Members of the dispossessed, won’t you lend me your ears!” This passionate call reverberates throughout the nearly 40-minute epic that serves as the heart and soul of Constitution, the latest from South African composer, cultural worker, educator, and percussionist Asher Gamedze. The LP was released on August 30th from the excellent Chicago-based record label International Anthem.
Following his 2023 release, Turbulence and Pulse, Gamedze returns with a double album that is both a radical manifesto and a celebration of collective creation. This time, he’s joined forces with The Black Lungs, a ten-piece ensemble that transforms the studio into a crucible of autonomous soundscapes.
Recorded in a single day at Cape Town’s Sound and Motion Studios, Constitution is a deep exploration of what it means to create together. Gamedze’s drumming, a rhythmic force that pulses with life, intertwines with Ru Slayen’s percussive textures, Sean Sanby’s resonant basslines, and Nobuhle Ashanti’s soulful piano.
Together, they form the heartbeat of an ensemble that breathes as one, dissolving the boundaries of what a rhythm section can be.
Tumi Pheko’s cornet soars alongside Garth Erasmus’ alto saxophone and Jed Petersen’s tenor sax, while Tina Mene’s vocals add a layer of ethereal beauty. Athi Ngcaba’s trombone anchors the ensemble, and Fred Moten’s spoken word weaves through the compositions, deconstructing the old to make way for the new.
As Moten eloquently observes, this “polyrhythmic but also always polyphonic critical joining—this re-assemblage of ensemble, this loving violation—lets the nightmares of individuation all unravel.”
This theme of collective creation, of finding power and possibility within the ensemble, is the thread that runs through all of Gamedze’s work. As he reflects in the album’s liner notes, “The ensemble experience of study and struggle is the basis of my thought and everything I try to do in this mad world.”
He situates Constitution within the broader historical and ongoing struggles of the dispossessed, explaining that “The revolutionary thought and practice of the Black Consciousness Movement inspires the Black Lungs. In particular, the relationship between antagonism—constituting a united front of all the oppressed against white supremacy and racial capitalism—and the possibilities for resistance and elaboration—the creative, militant capacities of those assembled—enabled and unleashed by that process of constitution.”
It’s a heavy-duty record with profound philosophical and socio-political themes, uniquely blending spoken word poetry, free jazz, psychedelia, and soul. If you dig it, check out the rest of Asher Gamedze’s work, which I’ve been thoroughly enjoying lately, including his 2020 LP Dialectic Soul.
Check out Constitution by Asher Gamedze & The Black Lungs on Bandcamp here.
Asher Gamedze: Bandcamp | Instagram
International Anthem: Bandcamp | Instagram | Official Website
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